ABSTRACT

In the contemporary philosophical literature, ideal virtue is often accused of setting a standard more appropriate for saints or gods than for human beings. In this paper, I undermine divinity-infused depictions of the fully virtuous, and argue that ideal virtue is, indeed, human. I focus on the virtuous person’s imperviousness to temptation, and contend that this imperviousness is not as psychologically implausible as it might seem. I argue that it is a virtuous person’s subjective construal of a situation that silences reasons in favour of acting contrary to virtue. That silencing, however, is not the whole story when it comes to their practical reasoning. Practical reasoning can, and often does, continue beyond silencing, particularly in the search for what Bernard Williams calls ‘constitutive solutions’. The upshot is a view of the virtuous as less god-like and more human—who will sometimes have to figure out what the virtuous response to a situation is, and who can still care deeply about the central concerns of human existence, including their life, health, loved ones, and life projects, even if those things will never provide them with a reason to act contrary to virtue.

摘要

在当代哲学文献中，理想的美德常常被指责为圣人或神灵设定了一个比人类更合适的标准。在这篇论文中，我破坏了对完全美德的神性描述，并认为理想的美德确实是人性的。我关注有德的人对诱惑的抗拒，并认为这种抗拒在心理上并不像看起来那么不可信。我认为这是一个有德的人对情况的主观解释，使理由沉默以支持违背美德的行为。然而，就他们的实际推理而言，沉默并不是全部。实践推理可以而且经常确实超越沉默，特别是在寻找伯纳德·威廉姆斯所说的“构成性解决方案”时。